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Artistic inspiration

So yet again I’ve taken some photographs that will be almost identical to the millions of other images taken by others who’ve visited the same place. But it’s a pretty place. And one that inspired many artists including some of the famous French impressionists (Honfleur in Normandy). Besides, trying to get a nice photo to print and frame at home is a lot cheaper than paying the prices the local art shops were asking for mostly fairly mediocre paintings for the passing tourist trade.

I’m waiting for a couple of prints to come back from an online order service but I’ve had fun trying to give them a bit of a stylised old-master look – and getting them printed on to some really nice Hahnemuhle German Etch paper should give much nicer results than standard photo-paper.

For those who haven’t been, Honfleur is a lovely medieval town with a picturesque harbour surrounded by cobbled streets, art shops and restaurants. Calvados and seafood are in abundance. Car parking spaces aren’t!

It was a lovely place to wander around, and I enjoyed slowing down photography wise too by using a manual focus (Samyang) lens for many of my photographs – generally I find that if I slow down and use less capable auto-everything gear, I get results that I’m happier with.

The weather was well-behaved too. No featureless cloudless skies (I don’t think theses are a feature of Normandy), but not too much rain and enough golden sunlight peering through on occasion to show the town at its best.

I could post many more photographs and that’s before moving on to other nearby attractions like Giverny (Monet’s garden) and Rouen. Suffice to say, however, that it was a very enjoyable short break made all the better by travelling to the continent without going anywhere near an airport – slow travel, slow photography, what’s not to like?

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Jon Schick

South East London-based, I work for the National Health Service but try and fit in some photography on a regular basis. A ridiculous and expanding number of cat companions provide some photographic material when the going gets really tough (it's the internet - gotta have a cat photo) but the almost-grown kids stay as far away from the lens as possible!
View all posts by Jon Schick